I went out the other day and pressed the button to release my hatch. Well it released it and then just kept buzzing. Now it won't latch and go back down and I had to unplug the motor so it would shut off. I ordered one of those gear nuts but I don't know if that's the problem. Do I need to buy a new latch assembly? If so does anyone have one.

Help is appreciated.

Edit: Mine is the late '91-'92 style one.

 

If you search you will find a load of topics on this. Just a quick though on why the motor wont shut off, When you hit the trunk pop button the motor then is activated to push the latch up. When the latch is at its highest point a metal tab on the side of the latch will flip a switch up during its upward movement. This is what turns the motor off. From what it sounds like, the metal tab is not flipping that switch up on your car. This happen to my trunk. The problem is that the tab is metal and the switch is plastic. (the switch looks kinda like a small light switch) Over time the metal tab may tear up the plastic switch. My solution was the reform the switch with some epoxy (JBweld works great, might use the quickweld for this job) then coat the metal with epoxy so it dosnt continue to tear up plastic. Get yourself a flat head screw driver and mess with it, see how it works, how it breaks and then how you can fix it.

 

When the motor continues to run, yet the hatch pull-down unit isn't moving, it is the classic symptom of a broken gear nut. The gear nut is plastic and is driven by the worm gear of the motor. The common mode of failure is that the teeth on the OD of the gear will shred or the gear can shear in half circumferentially. In the first case the worm drive of the motor will continue to spin, but since the teeth are shreaded the gear nut won't turn. In the second case the gear nut will continue to be turned by the motor, but the internal threaded portion of the gear nut is broken free, so the gear no longer raises or lowers the part I call the lift rod. That is the part with the two tabs that redbird_400 described. The two tabs on that rod flip the reversing switch to shut off the motor in either the up or down cycle. The Gear Nut is available from GM (p/n 20160587) or TDS as p/n 109111. Check out the Tech Article I wrote on repairing the hatch pull-down unit for more info.

Lon Salgren
Top-Down Solutions